Mental Health Affects Younger Women’s Heart Health

Mental health can be a big predictor for heart health, especially in women.

We are used to not worrying about heart disease in women and girls due to previous research stating that they have a much lower risk.

Now, we are being urged by a study from the American College of Cardiology’s Annual Scientific Session to reconsider this idea since they found that in reality, women and girls with a history of Anxiety and/or Depression disorders are at risk of accelerated development of cardiovascular risk factors.

This study looked at the health records of 71,214 participants of the Mass General Brigham Biobank research program of the Mass General Brigham health system and found that those diagnosed with Anxiety and/or Depression were 55% more likely to develop high blood pressure, high cholesterol and/or diabetes after checking in on them in a 10-year follow up. This means that even with the protective factor of higher oestrogen in women, it is not enough to overrule the effects of Anxiety and/or Depression.

Anxiety and Depression were presented together because despite being separate conditions, they share common neurobiological pathways, meaning they affect health in similar ways. With that, the researchers also saw no reason to separate them in the findings since they were both associated with increase in cardiovascular risks at the same rate.

This was even more apparent for women under the age of 50 who were almost twice as likely to develop the risk factors associated with cardiovascular health. When talking about this, Giovanni Civieri, MD, cardiologist, research fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, doctoral student at the University of Padua in Italy and the study’s lead author said that “Once a young woman has depression or anxiety, her absolute risk is comparable to a young male”.

This means we now know there is factual evidence that Anxiety and Depression are linked to potentially worsening heart health in women as the rates of Depression and Anxiety have been increasing ever since COVID -19 (Frankenthal et al. 2023). However, what we do not know is why or how those mental health conditions lead to the development of cardiovascular risks. To give us the answer Civieri mentioned that this question “is something we are continuing to study”.

After looking at this study the only thing that we do not know is whether antidepressants or psychotherapy help with slowing down or reducing the development of cardiovascular risks. But even so we do know that despite this, established treatments for high blood pressure like statin do help to reduce the risk of cardiac events.